Art News – October 2016

We are back into the swing of creative thinking here in art class! Our overall theme for this year’s class is Don’t Worry, Be Happy! You may recognize it by the Bobby McFerrin Song of the same title. This book features art by Alexander Calder and lyrics by McFerrin. We discussed how sometimes kids and adults get frustrated when their artwork doesn’t turn out perfect but when you worry, things get worse so it’s better to think positive and be happy with your efforts!

In our K-1 classes we started the school year learning about the Art Cart and all of the supplies available to them through the year. The first three weeks of class children had the opportunity to engage in free exploration of art materials on the art cart starting with drawing media and finishing with watercolor paints. Our first ‘official’ project involved the primary colors! Students learned that artists use line, shape and color to create art. We looked at a variety of red-blue-yellow inspired art and then made our own work using yellow paper, red paint, and blue tape.

2-3’s started October by showing off their personalities in a self portrait drawing. We looked at a variety of self portraits by past painters like Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo but also some more contemporary artists like Yayoi Kusama from Japan. We learned how our faces are proportioned and used mirrors to really get to know what makes us unique.

Is this science class or Art? 4-5’s learned about the connection between science and art. We looked at observational scientific drawings made by scientist documenting their work before the invention of photography. We also compared that work to more recent work by artist Katie Scott whose work resembles these scientist/artists of the past but also has an element of contemporary design. The best part of this project is hanging out in the greenhouse drawing and painting!

Middle School students are learning about proportion and scale. Our first project of the year started out with gesture drawing. Students posed for each other in action or sports poses as we did quick ‘stick figure’ sketches. The next step was to figure out how to draw the human figure to scale. We discovered that the adult human body, no matter how tall or short is generally around 7 to 8 heads tall. Using a one inch head, we made figure drawings with unique details and backgrounds.

The theme for Middle School Art Elective is ‘All Things Light and Shadow. This is a class that focuses on artwork that has something to do with either shadow or light. Our first project was to ‘capture’ a shadow. Students either traced shadows using flash lights or sunlight or took photographs of shadows. A couple of students even made 3d work using flash lights, cast shadows and boxes!